Random adventures and repairs on our old boat

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About Us

We purchased Archimedes in March of 2010 from Matt Maynard at Irwin Yacht Sales in Seattle. She is a 1978 Grand Banks 42. Hull number 572.

Prior to our purchase, she was briefly named Miss Bethany. Before that, she was Grey Eagle. Sometime in the distant past, I believe she was Skookum Lady.

As Grey Eagle, she was featured in the September 2007 issue of Passagemaker magazine. “Alone and Sinking” was, as the title implies, about the previous owners facing the prospect of their boat sinking in an out of the way bay in the Queen Charlotte Islands. In the article, the owners struck a rock damaging one of the rudder posts causing significant flooding. As it turns out, this article sparked conversations between the two of us. The discussion revolved around whether it was best to have one or two engines and how the propellers and rudders of twin engine boats are less protected than on a single engine boat. This was some time before we had started looking for a Grand Banks. Funny that it turns out to be the same boat. We did not discover that until after we had completed the purchase. (we did have the rudder posts throughly inspected)

At anchor in Melanie Cove

Since we purchased her, we’ve made a few changes. We had all the old bottom paint stripped off and the bottom repainted right after the sale was complete. We put in all new electronics including, chartplotter, radar, VHF, autopilot, and an AIS transceiver. We replaced the refrigerators with new lower power models. A new heater was also added. The rest has just been maintenance.

Excitement, our Islander 32 in Prideaux Haven

Like many people who purchase trawlers, we were sailors for a number of years. We love to sail, but just didn’t get much opportunity. Most of the time, we found ourselves motoring. We have also reached an age where a bit more room on the boat is a good thing. Moving to a trawler seemed like the right step.

You can contact us at info at mvarchimedes dot com.

If you find a post interesting here and there, please leave a comment.

If you have a DSC radio, our international MMSI number is 367445120. Or look for our AIS signal.

We hope you will find this blog occasionally interesting and informative.

Legal Stuff

Thank you very much for visiting our little site. Feel free to link to anything you find useful or valuable here. Please provide proper credit and attribution for all content posted on our blog.

All content is copyright Kim and Rusty Lewis.

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are copyrighted by Rusty Lewis under a Creative Commons license as indicated below.

Hi, Bruce. I do not know where to get the weather stripping. I exchanged a few emails with Nazri Abu at Grand Banks about this very subject a few months ago. Grand Banks does have weather stripping in stock, but not for our older boats. He was kind enough to forward a photo with the measurements of the weatherstripping they have. I’ll forward that to you through email. It won’t fit my boat, but you might get lucky.

Thanks for this interesting blog and beautiful photos. I am a French owner of a GB 42′ Motor Yacht, year 1999, hull number 1362, 2x caterpillar 300 HP moored in Antibes, France.
My previous GB was 42′ classic, year 1978, hull number 605 (if I remember well about the hull number ! ). If someday you would travel to the south of France on the French Riviera, feel free to contact is, we should have a ride on my GB.
All best. Olivier

Hello,
Really enjoy your blog. We don’t have a GB, we have a Tollycraft but still really enjoy your posts! Looking forward to your generator project as I am seroiusly thing of this for maybe this Fall.
Quick question….can you tell me how you got your marinetraffic AIS screen on the blog. My blog (tollyroger.com) is a wordpress aswell but can not figure out how you did that. Thanks

Thanks for leaving a comment! The generator project is proceeding. We need to get a bit more comfortable with the cost. It’s a fair bit more than we had thought it would be.

Marinetraffic … I created a text widget and used the code from here. https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/p/embed-map. There are a couple of ways to generate a map. I use the MMSI of our boat. It works about 99% of the time. If marine traffic can’t find us, it uses a default map from somewhere around Greece.

We are new to GB too! Love to go boating with you. We are on MECO (formerly Indigo), 1997 Europa. Sorry we didn’t meet you at Roche, this was our 2nd rendezvous. Just read your great fix for the cabin lights. Will be adding that to our project list. Thanks a lot. Thought that was getting shorter! We keep the boat at Roche, so please email when you are up or plan on waters north.

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. We had a great time at the rendezvous. We didn’t come close to meeting everyone. It seems I find two new projects for every one I finish. We would be happy to shoot you an email next time we are in your area.

Rusty,
This is J.J.Jones from Intruder GB 42-529, I just read in your blog that you have the old Grey Eagle, that boat was one of the reasons I bought my boat over 15 years ago. It was owned by a dear friend, that you should know about. I am a retired Naval Aviator and so was the owner of Grey Eagle, he was one of my hero’s, so when ever you get a minute I would love to tell you about the owner of Greay Eagle, it is a story worth hearing.
J.J.Jones